Cox Cemetery
Sidney vicinity, Comanche County, Texas
Marker Inscription
William Driscol Cox (1839-97) and his wife Amanda (Shugart) moved with their family from Tennessee to Texas in 1872. Cox taught in Robertson County, then (1876) bought and moved to a 300-acre ranch at this site. He taught the first school in Sidney and served 1882-84 as Sheriff of Comanche County. This cemetery was opened at the death of infant Mary Jane Cox (1875-76), sixth child of the family. Amanda (Mrs. W. D.) Cox was buried here in 1882. In 1886, Cox donated the 1-acre family burial ground to the Methodist Mission in nearby Bibb, as a public cemetery. In 1895 he sold most of his land to a nephew, James Sampson Cox (1866-1941), who later was one of the area's largest landowners. Although Bibb Mission closed in 1908, this facility continued in public use. In 1934, J. S. Cox bought and added three-fourths of an acre to the original ground. Under leadership of O. S. Cox (1895-1966), a grand-nephew of W. D. Cox, the fence and arched gate were installed in 1959. Reunion associations of the Hurt and Steele Families, connected by marriages to the Coxes, have helped maintain the cemetery. The Cox Cemetery Association was organized in 1968 with L. D. Cox, grandson of J. S. Cox, as the first president. (1977)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
William Driscol Cox brought his family from Tennessee to Texas in 1872 and settled a 300-acre ranch here, teaching the first school in nearby Sidney and serving as Comanche County sheriff. The cemetery began with the 1876 burial of his infant daughter Mary Jane, and in 1886 Cox donated the ground to a Methodist mission as a public burial place. Generations of the Cox family and their kin have tended it ever since.
Why it matters
Family burial grounds like this trace the deep roots a single pioneering household could put down, shaping a rural community across generations.
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Related people
- · William Driscol Cox
- · James Sampson Cox
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Pendergrass Cemetery
Sidney vicinity, TX
William and Emaline Pendergrass left Tennessee for Texas in 1849 and put down permanent roots in frontier Comanche County by 1873. A community builder, William helped found churches and a school, and in 1883 gave a plot of his land to bury a stranger found nearby—the first grave in what became the family cemetery. He deeded the acre to the community in 1888, and generations of descendants now rest among its more than five hundred graves.
Community of Sidney
Sidney, TX
Sidney took shape around 1870 when early settlers located along Jimmie's Creek, building a log schoolhouse by a spring in 1877 that also hosted the town's Methodist, Baptist, and Church of Christ congregations in turn. A store, post office (named for a storekeeper's son), and Holstein dairy herds followed, and by the early 1900s the town had doctors, drug stores, and a telephone exchange. It also basked in the fame of nearby Round Mountain, the first field laboratory of world-renowned geologist Dr. Robert T. Hill.
Bibb Community
Sidney, TX
Bibb sprang up when Anglo cotton farmers settled western Comanche County in the 1870s, and by 1891 seven men platted a proper town of 44 lots. At its height in the 1890s it bustled with cotton gins, general stores, a school, four churches, a broom factory, and Masonic and Odd Fellows lodges. As roads improved and rail bypassed it, the population drained away; today no trace of Bibb remains on the ground.
Taylor's Chapel Congregational Methodist Church
Comanche, TX
In 1901 a Methodist circuit preacher gathered area families under a brush arbor near Soda Springs, and the next year Hood Taylor deeded land that gave the congregation its name. For generations the church anchored a scattered rural community, often worshipping outdoors under arbors and tabernacles even after its first sanctuary rose in 1902. A handful of long-serving pastors, two of them together spanning more than thirty years, carried it into its second century.